ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the impact that colonialism had upon women and work in North Africa, principally Algeria and Tunisia, from roughly 1850 until the eve of decolonialization in the post-World War-II era. Work will principally be defined and understood as manufacturing enterprises, particularly handicrafts fashioned by women, whether exclusively for household consumption or for both domestic use and commercialization in markets. Handicraft production by indigenous female artisans represents a crucial site of scholarly inquiry because of the key position that textiles, pottery, and other items played in both the household economy and in translocal economic relationships. All over Algeria, rural-to-urban population movements had brought the village into the city by World War-I. The importance of sedentary-nomadic mutualism in the traditional economy and social order is best seen in the Kabylia region of northern Algeria.
